Present invention relates to a group environment setting method and system thereof for setting an operation environment and an application software for a group of people when a cooperative operation is performed on a computer by a group consisting of plural persons.
In the conventional computer environment setting, customization of an application environment and various software are performed on individual basis. Personal customization of a layout of metaphors on a desktop of GUI (Graphical User Interface), or setting of key binding on a personal-use software or the like can be given as examples. In order to achieve such environment setting, each customization information is managed by storing the information in files or the like on individual basis. Even in a case where similar customized setting can be applied for a same operation, or can be shared in a same department of a company, the files are redundantly stored by each person.
Meanwhile, as one of the techniques for organizing complicated program information, an inheriting function is conventionally suggested, where program information such as an operation method and data structure or the like is managed in hierarchy, and where information defined in the upper hierarchy is inherited by the lower hierarchy. Taking the program language C++ as an example, when classes are defined as a template of an object, the inheriting function is employed to hierarchize the classes so that the complicated classes are simply defined.
Recently, as the high-performance computers, connected with each other in a high-speed network, are widely used and technologies for distributed computing softwares are developed, enabling a group consisting of plural persons to parallelly perform a cooperative operation, it has become necessary to develop a tool which is suitable for setting an operation environment and an application software for each of such groups.
In the conventional method of setting an environment on individual basis, however, since each environment is set separately, enough supports cannot be provided for users in a cooperative operation environment, resulting in the following problems:
(1) Labor required for setting an environment cannot be reduced even among those people who participate in the same cooperative operation; PA0 (2) Even among members who belong to the same group, an operation method in one's environment is completely different from an operation method in another environment; PA0 (3) It is difficult to maintain consistency in an environment setting of each persons in a group; PA0 (4) It is difficult to support a dynamically generated group. Herein, the dynamically generated group is not a group having a predetermined identifier, but is a group not having a specific identifier, for instance, a group of terminals which run a predetermined application software; PA0 (5) A flexible way of specifying a group is not provided. PA0 (1) Since an environment setting is non-dynamical, it is troublesome to change the setting in accordance with a group situation; PA0 (2) Since no specific display of the group situation is explicitly made, confusion occurs among persons who belong to the same group but operate in different environment settings.
In order to solve the above problems, a method is sought for setting a common environment in a group consisting of plural persons.
Recently, a network application is not limited to sharing of information via files or database, but is extended to a wider application form, such as a video conference or viewing of remote camera images. FIG. 1 shows a typical operation environment, where plural workstations or personal computers 201 and 202 are connected via a LAN 200 and holding of a television conference as well as sharing of drawing tools are possible by sending information to each other through the network such as the LAN.
Due to the aforementioned development in network application form, it is necessary to extend an idea of an environment to be set for programs operated via network. The primary factor for setting an environment herein is, for instance, setting of an access privilege (file protection code) related to data to be generated, setting of privacy protection in video conferences (i.e. allowance of limited attendants), setting of rules for assigning a chairperson privilege or an operation privilege in a cooperative operation tool and the like.
With the conventional method of setting an environment on individual basis, there are the following problems in the cooperative operation environment.
When operation behavior of a concerned party is observed in a real world from a cooperative-operation point of view, a style or a rule for individual operation behavior does not solely depend on data which is subjected to operation, or members who constitute the group, but mostly depends on the situation where a group activity is carried on. However, the above described group situation is not applied to present computer-base cooperative operation system (groupware). And it has not been realized to execute the group operation effectively.
As such words like cyberspace or media space are suggested to describe an information world constituted by networked computers, a network is accessed with an assumption of a space as a metaphor. Therefore, an expression of the above group situation as a "place" to execute a certain operation, can be regarded as an analogy of a space. A directory as in a set of files, for instance, can be the "place" in the current computer system. However, information in the directory has protection code for the directory only; and there is no method for sharing the protection code in a group, for example, when generating a new file in the same group.